Harper Lee's second novel, 'Go Set a Watchman,' to be published in July | PBS NewsHour For Harper Lee fans, great excitement for the book that came before ‘Mockingbird’ Publishing company Harper plans a first printing of two million copies of the recently rediscovered “Go Set a Watchman,” a novel the 88-year-old Lee finished in the 1950s. The book appears to be a sequel to “Mockingbird,” a mainstay in high school English classes . “In the mid-1950s, I completed a novel called ‘Go Set a Watchman,'” Lee said in a statement provided by her publisher . “It features the character known as Scout as an adult woman, and I thought it a pretty decent effort. My editor, who was taken by the flashbacks to Scout’s childhood, persuaded me to write a novel (what became ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’) from the point of view of the young Scout.” “I was a first-time writer, so I did as I was told. I hadn’t realized it (the original book) had survived, so was surprised and delighted when my dear friend and lawyer Tonja Carter discovered it.

After much thought and hesitation, I shared it with a handful of people I trust and was pleased to hear that they considered it worthy of publication. I am humbled and amazed that this will now be published after all these years.” Carter helped broker the deal with HarperCollins Publishers, Harper’s parent company, after she found the manuscript at a “secure location where it had been affixed to an original typescript of ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’,” the publisher said. Set 20 years after “Mockingbird,” the new book follows Scout as an adult woman in Maycomb, Alabama in the 1950s. “Scout (Jean Louise Finch) has returned to Maycomb from New York to visit her father, Atticus,” the publisher said. “She is forced to grapple with issues both personal and political as she tries to understand her father’s attitude toward society, and her own feelings about the place where she was born and spent her childhood.” “Mockingbird,” the 1960 bildungsroman classic, has sold more than 40 million copies worldwide and inspired the 1962 Oscar-winning film starring Gregory Peck as attorney Atticus Finch.

Despite the massive popularity of her debut book, Lee has shied away from the limelight . She still lives in Monroeville, Alabama, the model town for the fictional Maycomb in “Mockingbird.” The 304-page “Watchman” is scheduled for release on July 14. Lee’s publisher said she was unlikely to do a publicity tour for the novel. When did you first read “To Kill a Mockingbird”? Let us know in the comments. Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee, Paperback | Barnes & Noble® B&N Reads 8/28/2015 The publication of Go Set a Watchman was one of the most exciting and unexpected literary events in recent memory. Now that we’ve all had a chance to digest a novel we never thought we’d get to read, we’re ruminating on a few of its most powerful and memorable moments. Warning: spoilers throughout.

Read More Denver Post “[Go Set a Watchman is a] brilliant book that ruthlessly examines race relations New York Times Opinion Pages: Taking Note “Go Set a Watchman is such an important book, perhaps the most important novel on race to come out of the white South in decades… NPR's "Code Switch" “In this powerful newly published story about the Finch family, Lee presents a wider window into the white Southern heart, and tells us it is finally time for us all to shatter the false gods of the past and be free.” Buffalo News “[Go Set a Watchman is] filled with the evocative language, realistic dialogue and sense of place that partially explains what made Mockingbird so beloved.” Los Angeles Times “Don’t let ‘Go Set a Watchman’ change the way you think about Atticus Finch…the hard truth is that a man such as Atticus, born barely a decade after Reconstruction to a family of Southern gentry, would have had a complicated and tortuous history with race.” Wall Street Journal “[Go Set a Watchman] contains the familiar pleasures of Ms.

Lee’s writing- the easy, drawling rhythms, the flashes of insouciant humor, the love of anecdote.” Washington Post “A significant aspect of this novel is that it asks us to see Atticus now not merely as a hero, a god, but as a flesh-and-blood man with shortcomings and moral failing, enabling us to see ourselves for all our complexities and contradictions.” Time “The success of Go Set a Watchman... lies both in its depiction of Jean Louise reckoning with her father’s beliefs, and in the manner by which it integrates those beliefs into the Atticus we know.” San Francisco Chronicle “Go Set a Watchman’s greatest asset may be its role in sparking frank discussion about America’s woeful track record when it comes to racial equality.” Chicago Tribune “What makes Go Set a Watchman memorable is its sophisticated and even prescient view of the long march for racial justice.

Remarkably, a novel written that long ago has a lot to say about our current struggles with race and inequality.” Columbus Dispatch “[Go Set a Watchman] captures some of the same small-town Southern humor and preoccupation with America’s great struggle: race.” Vanity Fair “Go Set a Watchman’s gorgeous opening is better than we could have expected.” The Guardian “Go Set a Watchman is more complex than Harper Lee’s original classic. A satisfying novel… it is, in most respects, a new work, and a pleasure, revelation and genuine literary event.” CNN.com “Lee’s ability with description is evident… with long sentences beautifully rendered and evoking a world long lost to history, but welcoming all the same.” The Independent “A coming-of-age novel in which Scout becomes her own woman…Go Set a Watchman’s voice is beguiling and distinctive, and reminiscent of Mockingbird. (It) can’t be dismissed as literary scraps from Lee’s imagination. It has too much integrity for that.” USA Today “Go Set a Watchman provides valuable insight into the generous, complex mind of one of America’s most important authors.” New York Post “Atticus’ complexity makes Go Set a Watchman worth reading.

With Mockingbird, Harper Lee made us question what we know and who we think we are. Go Set a Watchman continues in this noble literary tradition.” People “A deftly written tale… there’s something undeniably comforting and familiar about sinking into Lee’s prose once again.” Vulture “One overarching theme that many critics have zeroed in on is that there is a lot to learn from the novel, as both a writer and a reader.” Daily Beast “As Faulkner said, the only good stories are the ones about the human heart in conflict with itself. And that’s a pretty good summation of Go Set a Watchman.” Bloomberg View “Go Set a Watchman offers a rich and complex story… To make the novel about pinning the right label on Atticus is to miss the point.” The Barnes & Noble Review Now that the brouhaha from the publication of Go Set a Watchman has quieted, we are left, like Maycomb's citizens, to examine society's rough judgment. In no particular order, we've heard the following: that the book is a rough first draft of Mockingbird. That it's our first taste of an adult Scout or a shockingly racist Atticus.

That it's an odious money-grab on the part of its publishers, since Lee herself vowed to never write another book  and, now deaf and nearly blind in a nursing home, Lee hasn't sanctioned its publication. That the discussion of race lacks the subtlety and strength of the original, and, most important, parents who've named their children after Atticus have to rethink the whole thing. Some of these are opinions, and some are mistaken. (Search "the Jane Austen of southern Alabama" for Harper's subsequent writing efforts  and read Mockingbird itself to see that it is entirely from the point of view of the adult Scout, looking back.) They show we have not paid a great deal of attention to Mockingbird  or to Watchman, either. Because Watchman is not a failed race novel or a rough draft of Mockingbird. It's a novel about Jean Louise becoming a woman and a sexual being. In the novel's most vivid and brilliant chapters, the childhood Jean Louise gets her period, a teen Jean Louise unsuccessfully stuffs her (nonexistent) bra, and her adult self fumbles with the idea of marrying childhood beau Henry Clinton.

That Jean Louise, just off the train and being driven home by Henry, coldly rejects his proposal at the prospect of "another shabby little affair ... la the Birmingham country club set" amid the "latest Westinghouse appliances." Jean Louise's adult self is as cosmopolitan as her childhood self is ignorant. In this book, the dramatic crisis comes when Jean Louise's falsies wind up on a billboard honoring WWII veterans from the high school. (By way of boyfriend Henry Clinton, Atticus saves her from conviction.) In a more disturbing section, when a sixth-grade classmate gets pregnant by her father, Jean Louise, who has recently begun to menstruate, thinks she can become pregnant by a classmate who's forced a kiss on her. A brutal year passes, at the close of which she attempts suicide. She is only narrowly saved by Henry. Slowly and deliberately Calpurnia told her the simple story. As Jean Louise listened, her year's recollection of revolting information fell into a fresh crystal design; as Calpurnia's husky voice drove out her year's accumulation of terror, Jean Louise felt life return. She breathed deeply and felt cool autumn in her throat.

She heard sausages hissing in the kitchen, saw her brother's collection of sports magazines on the living room table, smelled the bittersweet odor of Calpurnia's hairdressing. When Aunt Alexandra  whose milk glass collection, Jean Louise tells us, is a signifier of a woman who "despises men and thrives out of their presence"  throws Jean Louise a much-feared Coffee, her social gathering of the town's women, we are treated to a stunning chapter worthy of The Group (with notes of Peyton Place). Like an anthropologist, Jean Louise is the silent recipient of the idle chatter that codifies the world of Maycomb's women: "When Jerry was two months old he looked up at me and said . . . toilet training should really begin with . . . he was christened he grabbed Mr. Stone by the hair and Mr. Stone . . . wets the bed now." Jean Louise's breasts come up again  literally  when she scandalizes the town by swimming fully clothed with Henry in the river. The gossip has Henry and Jean Louise skinny-dipping. This, like her childhood scrapes, Aunt Alexandra finds horrifying, Atticus amusing.

"I hope you weren't doing the backstroke," Atticus notes wryly. Atticus's sense of humor in that moment is much closer to the one we find in Mockingbird, but much of the hoopla over Atticus's racism may have stemmed from a misunderstanding of Mockingbird's take on race in the first place. I'm far from the first to make this observation, but for a novel that purports to be about racial tensions, most of the action in Mockingbird happens between white people. Mockingbird takes place during the boom of historically black colleges and Negro secondary schools, one in which black educators and intellectuals fanned out across the South to create an educated middle class in the midst of segregation and unchecked violence. But Calpurnia's "white" voice, it seems, is mostly learned from her proximity to white people, and her humanity is shown through her love of Scout and Jem. The same is true of Maycomb's black community, whose humanity is evidenced mostly through their deference to white people.

(Readers may note the irony in the fact that, in a book published in 1960, Maycomb's black citizens seem always to be getting up and giving the Finch children seats.) We never know how Tom feels about being stuck in a jail with only a child and lawyer between him and a lynch mob  I can't imagine heading securely off to sleep at Atticus's assurance, myself  and we'll never know how Dolphus Raymond's partner feels about the fact that he must pretend he's drunk in public to be with her. Add Lee writing about Scout breathing in "the warm bittersweet smell of clean Negro," or admiring Tom as a "black-velvet Negro, not shiny, but soft black velvet," you see that while Go Set a Watchman is controversial for some, Mockingbird was always pretty controversial for others. (I'm still waiting for the book in which a white character is introduced by his or her color and smell.) Despite the official story, it's unlikely that Watchman is a first draft of Mockingbird. It's an entirely different book, in time period, point-of-view, and plot.

(Save a few should-be- stricken scenes dropped in whole cloth from the classic.) Many reviewers have noted the oddity of Watchman's assuming readers will have such familiarity with a cast of characters we've never met before, or that Mockingbird was born of a scant two paragraphs mentioning Atticus's famous case. Instead, Go Set a Watchman reads more like a companion book, even simultaneous draft, one in which Lee shows she's aware of a black community that attends Tuskegee and, in Uncle Jack's speeches, finds an ugly, quasi-intellectual racism closer to home. As a character, Henry Clinton gives voice to the "trash" cursorily dismissed by Atticus in Mockingbird  but as a love interest, Reader: thank God she doesn't marry him. If it's true that editor Alice Tayoff gently steered Lee into Mockingbird, I think Lee could have produced something as vibrant and interesting here, but these sections as they exist are clumsy and underworked  probably of more use to scholars and interested parties than to the devoted Lee fan. That is not true, however, of the nearly half of the book that comprises Jean Louise's growth from Scout to a woman.

Among Coffees, falsies, and the codes of southern womanhood, this book finds its truest thread. I want to see more of the post-WWII social stratum of families with their Mixmasters and matchbox houses, more of Jean Louise's life in New York, where she does not date but goes to the Artist's League to paint at night. In Aunt Alexandra's Coffee, we find an antihero that unseats Atticus. There's another novel in the ruination Jean Louise visits upon southern femininity, in what happens when she descends from the balcony below which Atticus and the townsmen talk. Mockingbird took us into the world through the eyes of a child, but Lee might have had it in her to write a classic about the education of a woman. Lizzie Skurnick is the author of Shelf Discovery: The Teen Classics We Never Stopped Reading. She lives in Jersey City. Reviewer: Lizzie Skurnick Publishers Weekly 07/20/2015 Reviewed by Louisa ErmelinoThe editor who rejected Lee's first effort had the right idea.

The novel the world has been waiting for is clearly the work of a novice, with poor characterization (how did the beloved Scout grow up to be such a preachy bore, even as she serves as the book's moral compass?), lengthy exposition, and ultimately not much story, unless you consider Scout thinking she's pregnant because she was French-kissed or her losing her falsies at the school dance compelling. The book opens in the 1950s with Jean Louise, a grown-up 26-year-old Scout, returning to Maycomb from New York, where she's been living as an independent woman. Jean Louise is there to see Atticus, now in his seventies and debilitated by arthritis. She arrives in a town bristling from the NAACP's actions to desegregate the schools. Her aunt Zandra, the classic Southern gentlewoman, berates Jean Louise for wearing slacks and for considering her longtime friend and Atticus protégé Henry Clinton as a potential husband—Zandra dubs him trash.

But the crux of the book is that Atticus and Henry are racist, as is everyone else in Jean Louise's old life (even her childhood caretaker, Calpurnia, sees the white folks as the enemy). The presentation of the South pushing back against the dictates of the Federal government, utilizing characters from a book that was about justice prevailing in the South through the efforts of an unambiguous hero, is a worthy endeavor. Lee just doesn't do the job with any aplomb. The theme of the book is basically about not being able to go home again, as Jean Louise sums it up in her confrontation with Atticus: "there's no place for me anymore in Maycomb, and I'll never be entirely at home anywhere else." As a picture of the desegregating South, the novel is interesting but heavy-handed, with harsh language and rough sentiments: "Do you want them in our world?" Atticus asks his daughter. The temptation to publish another Lee novel was undoubtedly great, but it's a little like finding out there's no Santa Claus.

Library Journal 08/01/2015 As every reader knows, Lee's second novel, from which her iconic To Kill a Mockingbird was spun 55 years ago, has just been published by Harper with considerable excitement and some still-shifting uncertainty, as reported by the New York Times, about how the manuscript was rediscovered. Lee's original work has feisty 26-year-old Jean Louise Finch, nicknamed Scout as a child and the basis for Mockingbird's beloved heroine, returning home from New York to Maycomb Junction, AL, post-Brown v. Board of Education and encountering strongly resistant states'-rights, anti-integrationist forces that include boyfriend Henry and, significantly, her father, Atticus Finch, Mockingbird's moral center. Readers shocked by that revelation must remember that there are now two Atticus Finches; the work in hand is not a sequel but served as source material for Lee's eventual Pulitzer Prize winner, with such reworked characters a natural part of the writing and editing processes. Even if one can imagine that the seeds of the older Atticus are there in the younger Atticus—and that's possible—these are different characters and different books.

More significantly, the current work stands as you-are-there documentation of a specific time and place, contextualizing both Mockingbird and the very beginnings of the civil rights movement, and for that reason alone it's invaluable and recommended reading. Mockingbird's Atticus was right for 1960, just after the Little Rock integration crisis, with his defense of a wrongly accused African American making him a moral beacon and a lesson for all. Yet for many readers, even those who love and admire Mockingbird, it also smacked of white self-congratulation, and the current book is a rawer, more authentic representation of Southern sentiment at a tumultuous time, years removed from the solidly (and safely) segregationist era of Mockingbird. If Watchman is occasionally digressive or a bit much of a lecture, it's good enough to make one wish that Lee had written a dozen works. It's also a breathtaking read that will have the reader actively engaged and arguing with every character, including Jean Louise.

In the end, despite Jean Louise's powerful articulation that the court had to rule as it did, that "we [whites] deserve everything we've gotten from the NAACP," and that Negroes (as the novel says) will rise and should rise, it's unsettling and, yes, disappointing that the confrontation between Jean Louise and Atticus is ultimately an engineered effort to make her stand up for herself and stop worshipping her father. That's not quite believable, and what's right gets a little lost in states' rights, which Jean Louise herself supports. At least she doesn't run back to New York, but did she really win her argument? The ugly things she hears around her are still being said today. VERDICT Disturbing, important, and not to be compared with Mockingbird; this book is its own signal work.—Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal Kirkus Reviews 2015-07-15 The long-awaited, much-discussed sequel that might have been a prequel—and that makes tolerably good company for its classic predecessor. It's not To Kill a Mockingbird, and it too often reads like a first draft, but Lee's story nonetheless has weight and gravity.

Scout—that is, Miss Jean Louise Finch—has been living in New York for years. As the story opens, she's on the way back to Maycomb, Alabama, wearing "gray slacks, a black sleeveless blouse, white socks, and loafers," an outfit calculated to offend her prim and proper aunt. The time is pre-Kennedy; in an early sighting, Atticus Finch, square-jawed crusader for justice, is glaring at a book about Alger Hiss. But is Atticus really on the side of justice? As Scout wanders from porch to porch and parlor to parlor on both the black and white sides of the tracks, she hears stories that complicate her—and our—understanding of her father.

To modern eyes, Atticus harbors racist sentiments: "Jean Louise," he says in one exchange, "Have you ever considered that you can't have a set of backward people living among people advanced in one kind of civilization and have a social Arcadia?" Though Scout is shocked by Atticus' pronouncements that African-Americans are not yet prepared to enjoy full civil rights, her father is far less a Strom Thurmond-school segregationist than an old-school conservative of evolving views, "a healthy old man with a constitutional mistrust of paternalism and government in large doses," as her uncle puts it. Perhaps the real revelation is that Scout is sometimes unpleasant and often unpleasantly confrontational, as a young person among oldsters can be. Lee, who is plainly on the side of equality, writes of class, religion, and race, but most affectingly of the clash of generations and traditions, with an Atticus tolerant and approving of Scout's reformist ways: "I certainly hoped a daughter of mine'd hold her ground for what she thinks is right—stand up to me first of all." It's not To Kill a Mockingbird, yes, but it's very much worth reading.

‘Go Set a Watchman’ Excerpt Published Ahead of Novel’s Release ‘Go Set a Watchman’ Excerpt Published Ahead of Novel’s Release By Stav Ziv On 7/10/15 at 11:01 AM Harper Lee in 1960. At right, the cover of her second novel, “Go Set a Watchman,” to be published July 14. Michael Brown, HarperCollins Publishers Culture Go Set a Watchman Harper Lee To Kill a Mockinbird Books and Literature Reese Witherspoon Readers around the world are holding their breaths and counting the minutes until Tuesday’s release of Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman. Just days before its long-awaited publication, they can now whet their appetite for the full novel as they devour its first chapter. The excerpt was published early Friday by both The Guardian and The Wall Street Journal . Fans can either read the text directly or listen to actress Reese Witherspoon narrating the chapter in just under 24 minutes. The Guardian’s version in particular is visually pleasing, with illustrations by Tom Clohosy Cole and an option to play ambient audio for those choosing to read rather than listen to Witherspoon’s narration.

In early February of this year, Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishing, announced that it would publish the novel on July 14. The new book features an adult Jean Louise Finch—the young narrator of Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, known by the nickname Scout—returning to the fictional town of Maycomb, Alabama, to visit her father. In Mockingbird, small-town lawyer Atticus Finch took on the defense of a black man accused of raping a white woman. Go Set a Watchman opens with Jean Louise Finch on a train to Maycomb for her “fifth annual trip home.” Related Stories ‘Scout’ Does a Reading and Other Celebrations for ‘Go Set a Watchman’ “Since Atlanta, she had looked out the dining-car window with a delight almost physical,” reads the novel’s first sentence . “Over her breakfast coffee, she watched the last of Georgia’s hills recede and the red earth appear, and with it tin-roofed houses set in the middle of swept yards, and in the yards the inevitable verbena grew, surrounded by whitewashed tires.

She grinned when she saw her first TV antenna atop an unpainted Negro house; as they multiplied, her joy rose.” To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee’s first novel, was published in 1960 and won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction the following year. Five and a half decades elapsed without a follow-up to the novel, which has sold more than 40 million copies around the world and become a staple on bookshelves and in classrooms. According to the publisher , Go Set a Watchman was completed in the mid-1950s, before To Kill a Mockingbird, but “my editor, who was taken by the flashbacks to Scout’s childhood, persuaded me to write a novel from the point of view of the young Scout,” Lee was quoted as saying in a press release. “I was a first-time writer, so I did as I was told.” The manuscript for Go Set a Watchman was said to have been rediscovered years later by Lee’s lawyer. Since Lee is known for avoiding media attention and chose not to publish a second novel for so many years, the February announcement raised concerns. Friends feared Lee was in a fragile mental state and had been manipulated into publishing Go Set a Watchman.

The controversy, however, did not seem to dampen fans’ excitement. The novel set a record as HarperCollins’s most preordered book and has become the most preordered book on Amazon.com for 2015. Go Set A Watchman: Retired teacher reads Harper Lee novel in 25 minutes - Telegraph How about that? Go Set A Watchman: Retired teacher reads Harper Lee novel in 25 minutes Anne Jones hurtles through long-awaited sequel to To Kill A Mockingbird in world record time in incredible feat of speed-reading Anne Jones, six time world speed reading champion, who finished Go Set a Watchman in just over 25 minutes at Forum Books in Corbridge, Northumberland. Photo: PA By Agency 12:54PM BST 14 Jul 2015 It took almost 60 years for Harper Lee's Go Set A Watchman to reach the world - and retired teacher Anne Jones just 25 minutes to read it. In an incredible feat of speed-reading, the 63-year-old hurtled through the long-awaited sequel to To Kill A Mockingbird in a world record time.

Anne Jones can read 10 pages perminute (PA) With the book released at midnight on Tuesday in bookstores around the world , Ms Jones was not the first to read it - but she was certainly the quickest to get from cover to cover. • Ten things we've learned about Harper Lee's Go Set a Watchman The avid book fan is six times' world speed-reading champion and has perfected the art over the last 20 years to the point where she can easily get through 10 pages every minute. On Tuesday, she was going even faster - averaging 11.1 pages per minute as she whipped through the book's 278 pages in 25 minutes and 31 seconds. The cover of Go Set a Watchman She said: "I have always been a huge fan of To Kill A Mockingbird, it is very nearly perfect and it has stayed with me from the first time I read it many many years ago. "Like all fans of the book, I wondered what would become of Scout and her father Atticus and what conflicts might lie ahead of them.

"Go Set A Watchman answers those questions and provides a few surprises and quite a bit of humour along the way, I found it immensely satisfying. "It is one of the most eagerly-anticipated books there has ever been and it didn't disappoint, I loved every moment of it and I'm looking forward to reading it again. "In some ways it's a shame it wasn't released earlier, it would have been virtually impossible to eclipse to Kill A Mocking Bird but the millions of people who love that book around the world will thoroughly enjoy the sequel." A woman reads Go Set A Watchman while queuing to buy it shortly after midnight at Foyles bookshop in London (Getty) She staged her impressive feat to clebrate the launch of the book at 8am on Tuesday in the independent Forum bookshop in the market town of Corbridge, Northumberland, where she buys most of the books she devours in the course of a year. Ms Jones, from Riding Mill, Northumberland, taught herself the skill of speed-reading after she turned 40. She is able to scan a page in an instant, taking in blocks of text rather than reading line by line and using a pencil to guide her vision.

Foyles bookshop in central London prepares to sell copies of the book (Getty) Ms Jones said: "It is a skill that anyone can learn but it takes time to learn how to focus and to unlearn the way that we were all taught to read. "The way I do it is by taking in a section of text to the left of the page, then a section on the right, quickly moving down the page section by section. "Your brain is able to quickly process the meaning and the detail as you go along if you train it to work that way. It is a technique that has been used by world leaders throughout history including Theodore Roosevelt, John F Kennedy and Margaret Thatcher. "People assume I will only have grasped the bare bones of the story, but when I read books that way I come out of it with just as much recollection and detail as those who read in the conventional way. "Normally if I'm reading for pleasure at home I don't go quite as fast as today.

It would usually take me about 45 minutes to finish a novel." Mary Badham as Scout and Gregory Peck as her father Atticus Finch in the 1962 film 'To Kill a Mockingbird' (Everett Collection/Rex Features) Go Set A Watchman is set 20 years after the events of Lee's 1960 Pullitzer Prize-winning masterpiece. Publicity-shy author Lee, who is now 89 and lives in a nursing home in Monroeville, Alabama, originally wrote the book in 1957, before reworking it with her editor to become courtroom drama To Kill a Mockingbird . The story of racism and injustice in the fictional town of Maycomb in the American South went on to sell 40 million copies and be studied in schools around the world. Mockingbird was also made into an Oscar-winning film starring Gregory Peck as lawyer Finch, who defends an innocent black man accused of raping a white woman. 'Mockingbird's' Atticus turns racist in 'Watchman' sequel - TODAY.com Today.com Atticus Finch, racist?

'Mockingbird' sequel paints controversial picture of beloved character 2015-07-13T11:32:00.000Z "To Kill a Mockingbird," the 1960 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Harper Lee — along with the 1962 Oscar-nominated movie adaptation — painted a very particular picture of the character of lawyer and father Atticus Finch. Closed Captioning Atticus Finch’s darker side spurs backlash to new Harper Lee novel Play Video - 3:04 Atticus Finch’s darker side spurs backlash to new Harper Lee novel Play Video - 3:04 Writing for NYT’s ‘Modern Love’ column is ‘a lot like falling in love,’ editor says As the man who faced down his white peers in 1930s Alabama to defend a black man in court against a rape charge, Finch was seen as a forward-thinking model of truth, justice and the American way, a portrayal underscored by a noble performance by Gregory Peck in the film.

MORE: Harper Lee's 'Go Set a Watchman' reveals shocker in first chapter But with "Mockingbird's" long-awaited sequel, also by Lee, Finch is now portrayed as very much a man of his times (the sequel takes place 20 years later) — a man with racist views, who attends Ku Klux Klan meetings and is opposed to desegregation. "We see Atticus' darker side," Time Magazine's Daniel D'Addario told TODAY. "He has, frankly, racist opinions about his black neighbors and clients. And he says he doesn't believe black people should be a part of civil society. This is really shocking to readers." Universal / AP Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch in the movie version of "To Kill a Mockingbird," and the cover of the new "Go Set a Watchman." MORE: Harper Lee's new book cover looks familiar Lee, 89, hasn't commented about the issue, but her publisher Harper Collins calls the book "bold and unflinching." "The question of Atticus' racism is one of the most important and critical elements in this novel, and it should be considered in the context of the book's broader moral themes," said the publisher.

MORE: Why Harper Lee, 'Mockingbird' are so special This is just the latest controversy since "Watchman" was first announced. Reports have suggested that Lee was manipulated into releasing the manuscript, which allegedly sat in a drawer for many years. "Watchman" was reportedly Lee's first attempt at telling main character Scout's story, but after reading it her 1950s editor reportedly convinced her to refocus on Scout's childhood. That book became "Mockingbird." Lee, in a statement, has denied being talked into publishing "Watchman," but has largely remained silent about the controversy. But this is more than just another book release for many; while Lee may have always intended Atticus as the man he's revealed to be in "Watchman," audiences long ago formed a very different opinion of the character. And that's what's being changed now. "This isn't just another visit with characters we hold so dear," said D'Addario. "This is a really complex and rich topic ... that really speaks to where we are right now as a nation." "Go Set a Watchman" will be published by Harper Collins on July 14. Follow Randee Dawn on Google+ and Twitter .

Go Set A Watchman: Retired teacher reads Harper Lee's new novel in 25 minutes - Mirror Online News Go Set A Watchman: Retired teacher reads Harper Lee's new novel in 25 minutes It took 58 years for Lee's long-awaited sequel to To Kill A Mockingbird to be released - but one woman has beaten it in less than half an hour Share Click to playTap to play The video will start in 8Cancel Play now Get daily updates directly to your inbox + Subscribe Thank you for subscribing! Could not subscribe, try again laterInvalid Email It took 58 years for Harper Lee's Go Set A Watchman to reach the world - and retired teacher Anne Jones just 25 minutes to read it today. Speed reading champion Anne, 63, managed to get through Lee's long-awaited sequel to To Kill A Mockingbird in a world record time. With the long-awaited work released at midnight in bookstores around the world, Anne may not have been the first to read it. But she was surely the quickest to get from cover to cover. Six times world speed reading champion, the self-confessed book worm has perfected her method over 20 years.

She can get through 10 pages every minute, and was even faster with the Harper Lee book - averaging 11.1 pages per minutes as she whipped through 278 pages in 25 minutes 31 seconds. Speed Demon: In an incredible feat of speed reading Anne, 63, hurtled through Lee's long-awaited sequel to To Kill A Mockingbird in a world record time (Photo: Daily Mirror / Andy Commins / KTD MEDIA) Afterwards she promised all fans of To Kill a Mockingbird were in for a real treat. "There's one scene where she goes to a dance and it all goes terribly wrong in terms of a wardrobe malfunction," she said. "I think people will find that very funny. We've still got the fun and the humour of the old To Kill A Mocking Bird. It is going to be a must for every Harper Lee fan." "To Kill A Mocking Bird is very nearly perfect and it has stayed with me from the first time I read it many many years ago," she continued.

"Like all fans of the book I wondered what would become of Scout and her father Atticus and what conflicts might lie ahead of them." Long Awaited: Harper Lee's novel 'Go Set A Watchman' at Waterstones in Piccadilly, London (Photo: PA) "Go Set A Watchman answers those questions and provides a few surprises and quite a bit of humour, I found it immensely satisfying," Anne added. "It is one of the most eagerly anticipated books there has ever been and it didn't disappoint. "I loved every moment of it and I'm looking forward to reading it again. In some ways it's a shame it wasn't released earlier." Her incredible feat took place in the independent Forum bookshop in the market town of Corbridge, Northumberland, where she buys most of the books she devours in the course of a year Anne, from nearby Riding Mill, taught herself the skill of speed reading after she turned 40. She is able to scan a page in an instant, taking in blocks of text rather than reading line by line and using a pencil to guide her vision.

New Novel: A staff member re-stocks copies of Harper Lee's eagerly awaited, but controversial second novel "Go Set a Watchman" (Photo: Getty) "It is a skill that anyone can learn but it takes time to learn how to focus and to unlearn the way that we were all taught to read," she explained. "The way I do it is by taking in a section of text to the left of the page, then a section on the right, quickly moving down the page section by section. "Your brain is able to quickly process the meaning and the detail as you go along if you train it to work that way." "It is a technique that has been used by world leaders throughout history including Theodore Roosevelt, John F Kennedy and Margaret Thatcher," Anne continued. "People assume I will only have grasped the bare bones of the story but when I read books that way I come out of it with just as much recollection and detail as those who read in the conventional way. "Normally if I'm reading for pleasure at home I don't go quite as fast as today.

It would usually take me about 45 minutes to finish a novel." Reclusive Author: Pulitzer Prize winner and "To Kill A Mockingbird" author Harper Lee Go Set A Watchman is set 20 years after the events of Lee's 1960 Pullitzer Prize-winning masterpiece. Publicity-shy author Lee, now 89 and who lives in a nursing home in Monroeville, Alabama, originally wrote the book in 1957. She later reworked it with her editor to become courtroom drama To Kill a Mockingbird. The original manuscript of Go Set a Watchman was discovered only last year. The story of racism and injustice in the fictional town of Maycomb in the American South went on to sell 40 million copies and be studied in schools around the world. Mockingbird was also made into an Oscar-winning film starring Gregory Peck as lawyer Finch, who defends an innocent black man accused of raping a white woman.

Most Read Most Recent Most Read Most Recent Harper Lee's novel 'Go Set a Watchman' previewed - NY Daily News Harper Lee's novel 'Go Set a Watchman' previewed, features 72-year-old Atticus Finch and Scout all grown up Harper Lee's novel 'Go Set a Watchman' previewed THE ASSOCIATED PRESS THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Friday, July 10, 2015, 3:19 AM We know this much so far about Harper Lee's new book: Atticus Finch is 72 and suffering from rheumatoid arthritis; Scout is a grown woman who has a suitor most anxious to marry her. And Scout's older brother, Jem, apparently has died. "Go Set a Watchman" begins with Scout, otherwise known as Jean Louise Finch, returning by train to Lee's legendary Maycomb, Ala., on one of several annual visits she makes from New York, where she is greeted by young Henry Clinton. The first chapter ran in Friday's editions of The Wall Street Journal and The Guardian . "Go Set a Watchman," the most unexpected second novel in memory, is coming out July 14.

It takes place in the 1950s, 20 years after "To Kill a Mockingbird," Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning book. U.S. publisher HarperCollins has said that pre-orders for "Go Set a Watchman" are the highest in company history and bookstores worldwide are planning events to celebrate the book's release. Harper Lee's long awaited follow to 1960's "To Kill a Mockingbird" is finally coming out July 14. "Go Set a Watchman" is the most unexpected second novel in memory. (Rob Carr/AP) Anticipation and apprehension have surrounded news of "Watchman" since it was announced in February. The surprise and ecstasy of a new work from Lee have been shadowed by suspicions the book doesn't measure up to "Mockingbird" and was approved without the 89-year-old author's full awareness. Lee has poor hearing and vision and resides in an assisted living facility in her hometown of Monroeville, Ala.. But her lawyer Tonja Carter; literary agent Andrew Nurnberg; and publisher have insisted she is delighted the book is coming out.

State officials, responding to at least one complaint of possible elder abuse, determined she was alert and capable of deciding on the release of "Watchman." "To Kill a Mockingbird," published in 1960, is set in the 1930s in the fictional town of Maycomb and introduced Atticus Finch, Scout, Boo Radley and other beloved literary characters. The book was adapted into an Oscar-winning movie starring Gregory Peck as Atticus and has become standard reading in schools and other reading programs, with worldwide sales topping 40 million copies. "Go Set A Watchman" will be released on July 14. (AP) The soon-to-be-published sequel to Lee’s classic novel, "To Kill a Mockingbird," is her first novel in 50 years. (AP) The book cover for Lee's second book "Go Set a Watchman" is similar to her classic novel 'To Kill a Mockingbird." In the years that followed "Mockingbird," Lee struggled to write a second book and eventually determined that the one novel could stand on its own, apparently never considering "Watchman" a possible successor.

She has not spoken to the media in decades and her absence from any promotion for "Watchman" marks a rare time that such a high-profile work is being released without the participation of a living author. Much of Friday's excerpt touches upon the landscape and history of the Maycomb region and the banter between Clinton and Scout, who playfully resists his marriage proposals. He is known as one of Maycomb's finest men, a World War II veteran and law student who has long been close to the Finches, assists Atticus in his law practice and regards Atticus as a father figure. Clinton, in turn, is a surrogate son to Atticus. The excerpt refers to the day Jean Louise's brother and heir apparent at the law practice, presumably Jem, "dropped dead in his tracks," forcing Atticus to find another successor. According to HarperCollins, Carter came upon the "Watchman" manuscript at a "secure location where it had been affixed to an original typescript of 'To Kill a Mockingbird.'" The new book, which Harper has said did not undergo any new revisions, is set in Maycomb during a time when the civil rights movement was taking hold in Lee's home state.

The Supreme Court had ruled unanimously in 1954 that segregated schools were unconstitutional, and the arrest of Rosa Parks in 1955 led to the yearlong Montgomery bus boycott. The 89-year-old will not be involved in promotion for the novel. (Gerald Herbert/AP) "In the mid-1950s, I completed a novel called 'Go Set a Watchman,'" Lee said in a statement issued by Harper in February. "It features the character known as Scout as an adult woman, and I thought it a pretty decent effort," she said. "My editor, who was taken by the flashbacks to Scout's childhood, persuaded me to write a novel (what became 'To Kill a Mockingbird') from the point of view of the young Scout. ... I am humbled and amazed that this will now be published after all these years," said Lee. ON A MOBILE DEVICE? WATCH THE VIDEO HERE. Tags: In Harper Lee’s ‘Go Set a Watchman,’ a less noble Atticus Finch - The Washington Post In Harper Lee’s ‘Go Set a Watchman,’ a less noble Atticus Finch The inside track on Washington politics. Be the first to know about new stories from PowerPost.

Sign up to follow, and we’ll e-mail you free updates as they’re published. You’ll receive free e-mail news updates each time a new story is published. You’re all set! Author Harper Lee. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) By Natasha Trethewey By Natasha Trethewey July 12, 2015 After the Supreme Court issued its landmark 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education, declaring segregation in public schools unconstitutional, Robert Penn Warren set off on a journey south. He was returning to his native land from New York City to witness and contend with the effects of the ruling on its people: “I was going back to look at the landscapes and streets I had known,” he wrote, “to look at the faces, to hear the voices, to hear, in fact, the voices in my own blood.” So, too, begins Harper Lee’s much-anticipated­ novel, “Go Set a Watchman,” with a grown-up Jean Louise Finch’s journey home from New York to visit her ailing father, Atticus Finch.

This is also a journey undertaken in the wake of Brown, and not long after the two are reunited, her father asks: “How much of what’s going on down here gets into the newspapers?” — setting in motion one of the book’s guiding preoccupations. Evidence suggests that “Watchman” was an early version of Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1960 novel, “ To Kill a Mockingbird ,” resubmitted after her publisher asked her to rewrite “Watchman” to focus on the perspective of Scout, a childhood version of Jean Louise, and place the story 20 years earlier, in the 1930s. Reading “Watchman,” which publishes Tuesday, one sees the imprint of the earlier draft — whole passages repeated nearly word for word: descriptions of the fictional town of Maycomb, Ala.; character studies of its residents seemingly in preparation for the work it would become — all of this good fodder for scholars, writers and students of literature and writing who can measure in it the evolution of a writer and her story through the process of revision.

Although the novel covers at first some familiar ground with flashbacks, the momentum changes just over a third of the way through to focus on the crux of the contemporary story — contemporary in the era it was written — that we have not heard. Jean Louise is a grown-up tomboy contending with gender roles she is loath to accept, a would-be suitor, and a newfound disappointment with her father and his ideals rooted in the transformations wrought by adulthood and the burgeoning recognition of different worldviews. The cover of Lee’s new book. (Harper Collins) In “Mockingbird,” Atticus became a kind of national hero, a progressive thinker who espoused the noble belief in equal rights: “Gentlemen, if there’s one slogan in this world I believe, it is this: equal rights for all, special privileges for none.” In “Watchman,” written in the third person, Scout, thinking of her father, recalls “a tiny voice talking in the warm comfortable past.” The adult Jean Louise encounters a different Atticus from what readers of “Mockingbird” will remember.

He joined the Ku Klux Klan and attended one meeting and is now a board member in one of the newly formed Citizens’ Councils springing up in communities throughout the South to oppose desegregation, in “protest to the Court . . . a sort of warning to the Negroes for them not to be in such a hurry.” This is the harsh reality with which Jean Louise must contend. In prose less nuanced than that of “Mockingbird,” prose steeped in the political rhetoric after the Brown decision, the characters in “Watchman” carry out an ideological debate that began in the South but would come to occupy the national consciousness in the 1960s and 1970s and in many ways continues today. There are some changes to the history of the Finch family that cause a rupture in the ongoing narrative for readers who know “Mockingbird”: the case of the black man, Tom Robinson, falsely accused of rape but found guilty nonetheless, is transmuted to become the case of a black man acquitted for sexual congress with a white woman — an encounter that was revealed to have been consensual.

Thus, the case that made Atticus a household name synonymous with righteousness and justice for all — even as he lost — is undermined. Now, instead of his sweeping and eloquent plea for the rights of all citizens, black and white, we encounter some of the novel’s most difficult passages: Atticus advocating for the preservation of segregation, the hierarchy of racial supremacy to which — despite what appears to her father’s generation, and to readers, as a kind of self-righteous, moralizing indignation — Jean Louise consents in large part: “We’ve agreed that they are backward, that they’re illiterate, that they’re dirty and comical and shiftless and no good, they’re infants and they’re stupid, some of them, but we haven’t agreed on one thing and we never will.

You deny that they’re human.” And herein lies the paradox at the heart of “Watchman” that many white Americans still cannot or will not comprehend: that one can at once believe in the ideal of “justice for all” — as Atticus once purported to — and yet maintain a deeply ingrained and unexamined notion of racial difference now based in culture as opposed to biology, a milder yet novel version of white supremacy manifest in, for example, racial profiling, unfair and predatory lending practices, disparate incarceration rates, residential and school segregation, discriminatory employment practices and medical racism. The argument that enlivens “Watchman” is one rooted not only in the class distinctions between “good white people” and “trash,” originally articulated in “Mockingbird,” but also an argument among all white Southerners anxious about the tumultuous times of court-ordered desegregation and apprehensive about the future. The action by the court, and the federal government enforcing the court’s edict, is presented as an affront to the way things were, to the status quo — the warm, comfortable past — and the paternalism that allowed many Southern whites to love the negro as long as he stayed in his place.

This is a white South trying to hold on to its rights — a troubling adherence to the uses of the doctrine of states’ rights — once to maintain the institution of slavery, later to maintain Jim Crow laws. A deep disappointment runs through the heart of the novel as the Finch family struggles with personal conflicts brought on by the social upheaval of the 1950s South. If Atticus is not willing to accept desegregation, Jean Louise also is resistant to change and anxious about it, even as she knows it must occur. A significant aspect of this novel is that it asks us to see Atticus now not merely as a hero, a god, but as a flesh-and-blood man with shortcomings and moral failing, enabling us to see ourselves for all our complexities and contradictions. The first chapter of Harper Lee's long-awaited second novel, “Go Set a Watchman,” was released Friday, a follow-up to her Pulitzer Prize winner “To Kill a Mockingbird.” (Reuters) “Watchman” is compelling in its timeliness.

During the historical moment in which the novel takes place, in states such as Georgia and South Carolina, legislators had begun to authorize the raising of the Confederate flag over the statehouse or the incorporation of it into the design of state flags as a reaction and opposition to the Supreme Court’s decision — thus inscribing the kind of white Southern anxiety dramatized in Lee’s novel. Perhaps the recent lowering of the Confederate flag on South Carolina’s statehouse grounds is a beginning — but there is still a long way to go. In the conclusion to his 1956 book, “ Segregation: The Inner Conflict in the South ,” Warren put it like this: “If the South is really able to face up to itself and its situation, it may achieve identity, moral identity.

Then in a country where moral identity is hard to come by, the South, because it has had to deal concretely with a moral problem, may offer some leadership.” Although there persists in “Watchman” an idea of the primacy of the individual conscience, the novel serves to remind us that we are at a moment in our ongoing pursuit of justice that puts our national conscience at stake, and it is all the more pressing that the watchman be attuned to the collective soul of our nation. Perhaps the best thing about this book is that it gives us a way to look at history from a great distance. It has been 61 years since the Brown decision, and now we have the hindsight to see the larger impact that Lee’s characters could not quite see: an outcome, as Warren suggested — that “desegregation is just one small episode in the long effort for justice.” Natasha Trethewey, a former U.S. poet laureate, is a professor at Emory University.

She was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 2007 for her collection “Native Guard.” entertainment Go Set A Watchman: First chapter of Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird sequel released online - Manchester Evening News What's On Go Set A Watchman: First chapter of Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird sequel released online The book follows a grown-up Scout Finch 20 years on from To Kill A Mockingbird. WARNING: Spoilers ahead Share Harper Lee and her long-awaited novel Go Set A Watchman Share Get What's On updates directly to your inbox + Subscribe Thank you for subscribing! Could not subscribe, try again laterInvalid Email Stop everything - the first chapter of Harper Lee’s long-awaited sequel to To Kill A Mockingbird has landed online. Go Set A Watchman picks up 20 years after the original book left off, following the lives of Jean Louise ‘Scout’ Finch and her family. It will be released on Tuesday July 14 in what is anticipated to be the biggest literary event of the decade. If you can’t wait until then, you can now read the opening pages of the novel for free on the Guardian or Wall Street Journal websites.

An audio sample, narrated by Oscar-winning actress Reese Witherspoon, is also available. The novel opens with a grown-up Jean Louise taking a train from New York back to Maycomb County, Alabama, to visit her sick father Atticus. The opening passages also contain a shocking revelation about Scout’s brother Jem in one throwaway line. The teaser has been warmly received by critics, with Times literary editor Robbie Millen describing it as ‘very promising’ and Alexandra Alter of the New York Times noting how ‘the same wry humor, biting banter and finely drawn characters flicker throughout’. Although billed as a sequel, Lee actually wrote Go Set A Watchman before To Kill A Mockingbird, which has remained her only published book until now. She took it to a publisher in 1957 but, on the advice of her editor, laid it aside to write another novel from the young Scout Finch’s perspective - and so her 1960 Pulitzer Prize-winning classic was born. The manuscript was rediscovered last year by the author’s lawyer, sending the literary world into a frenzy. It is already the most preordered book in publisher HarperCollins’ history.

Many bookshops will be opening at midnight for the release and are anticipating Harry Potter-style queues before it goes on sale. In Manchester, Waterstones Deansgate is hosting a Harper Lee night starting at 8pm on July 13, with a discussion on the text led by the University of Manchester’s Monica Pearl, followed by a screening of Robert Mulligan’s acclaimed 1962 black and white adaptation and a literary quiz before sales start at midnight. Spaces are limited so booking is essential. Call 0161 837 3000 or visit waterstones.com. Like us on Facebook

Question: “Go Set A Watchman” is a long awaited sequel to which novel published in 1960?
Answer: To Kill a Mocking Bird